OS/2 Booting with Bootman

[_AP]

Update.  I used gparted to set flags on the os2 partition.  I set the hidden flag.  This fixed Windows XP.  Can OS2 still boot from a hidden partition?  Are there any other issues with this?

[Dave Yeo]

The rule is to never use other then OS/2 tools to partition etc. With care, you can do some things with other tools such as gparted but you are in danger of screwing up the partition tables or the dlat data that OS/2 4.5+ needs to figure out the LVM info.
OS/2 can boot from a hidden partition with the right boot manager such as AirBoot, otherwise you have to test.

[Dave Yeo]

Now that you have XP booting, you should be able to use its disk tools to remove the drive letter assigned to the OS/2 partition from XP's view point and then if needed, unhide the OS/2 partition.

[_AP]

Can airboot install into the root partition, or does it need the mbr?

[Dave Yeo]

Airboot installs into the MBR. IBM's Boot Manager installs into a minimal sized primary.
For your set up, what I would do is use OS/2 LVM to partition something like,
primary bootmanager 8MB (one cylinder, the smallest that LVM will allow)
primary XP 16GB
extended OS/2 8GB
extended BeOS 40GB
extended 32 GB Haiku
extended 20GB Slackware,

Adding the planned partitions to bootmanager.
Then I would carefully install the other operating systems, usually using the advanced option so you only reformat the partitions and perhaps change the partition type.
I've never installed BeOS, I'm assuming it will install in an extended.
I did install Haiku once out of curiosity, things went smoothly, though I can't remember much about it besides no problems.
Slackware, you will have to be careful to just initialize the partition, put grub or lilo in the EBR, not the MBR, and perhaps use fdisk to change the type. And what about a swap partition? A 2 GB one perhaps?
XP, I've never installed, Win2K said during install it noticed boot manager and suggested that I use its disk manager to make boot manager bootable. Much better then Win95, which at the end of install informed the user that the OS/2 partition was now gone. In reality a minute in fdisk brought it back.

OS/2 has always been particular about partitioning, everything has to align with a cylinder boundary while other OS's will try to use all the space even if it means a partition ends in a weird spot as OS/2 sees it. Sometimes you end up with a functioning OS/2 but LVM won't run. With OS/2 4.5+ and LVM, we also need the LVM info saved in the MBR/EBR, what drive letter we have assigned and some other stuff about JFS. Whether Bootman touches that part, I don't know.

Edit: I'd assign the OS/2 partition as E: that way a shared partition can be D:

[Alex Taylor]

Windows has its own equivalent to LVM, called Logical Disk Manager.  It's been a while since I used XP, but IIRC you can open it by right-clicking on "My Computer", choosing "Manage", and scrolling through the options tree on the left until you find the Logical Disk Manager (ISTR it's hidden under a folder in a slightly non-obvious place).

From there you can remove any XP-assigned drive letter from a partition.

If OS/2 still can't boot, then what you will want to do is: from OS/2 boot media (e.g. the install CD), go into LVM and make sure the OS/2 volume has a drive letter.

[Remy]

Hmm.  I didn't think to change the drive letter in XP first.  I think it's not simple as registry issues can happen.  I'll go that route and let you know how it goes.

The BeOS boot manager just boots based on partition number.  I'm
Not sure what the OS/2 boot manager does.  When the windows boot manager is active just booting XP, it's just the default setup with the first partition being C:, until OS/2 interferes.  I think if I can successfully get XP booting with D:, I should be all set.

Sorry, not changing drive letter but just boot into the partition you will install OS/2 because this partition already was defined If I correctly understand it. I wrote D: because you wrote installing OS/2 to D: (drive letter is LVM added during install)

Boot one time (from under you boot manager) into the partition you will install OS/2 (if this partition is empty, boot will fail but the boot manager has it taken as boot partition, than boot on the DVD and install OS/2 (it should see the latest boot partition used from under you boot manager) 

[_AP]

Here are the steps I followed to get BeOS, OS/2, and Windows XP booting with the BeOS boot manager.

1:  Use BeOS to partition the drive.  Intel partition map.

Primary:
Windows XP (partition type NTFS/HPFS)
OS/2 Boot manager of about 200MB. Probably can be smaller. (Partition type OS/2 boot manager)
BeOS partition (type BeOS)
Extended:
I used the rest type NTFS/HPFS.

Intitialized BeOS as BeOS File System, 2048.  Initilized 200MB primary OS/2 partition as FAT16. (this removed OS/2 boot manager from "type" but maybe this isn't necessary.)

Set sizes you want.

2: Booted from OS/2 boot disk, then inserted second disk.  Used LVM.

- Assigned first partition C: in Logical view
- Deleted 4th primary partition in Physical view.  Created 4 logical partitions for myself.  1st for Haiku, 2nd 8GB for OS/2.

I may have saved and exited and rebooted here.  Then repeated steps to get to LVM.

- Created new volume.  I think I said can be made bootable.  Picked 2nd 200MB primary partiton.  Finished with F6.  Letter P:
- Created new volume.  I think I said doesn't need to be made bootable, and selected compatability volume. I chose the 8GB second exteneded partition.  I think i was able to make startable but not sure.  Maybe I set the 200MB P: partition as startable.  Set letter for extended OS2 partition to O:

Maybe I rebooted here.  I forget when to do it, but I was able to set O: as installable or startable, and install boot manager to P:  This part is most confusing for me and I think you have to get things in the right order.

I then installed OS/2 onto O: after rebooting.


3:  After installing, I booted from the BeOS cd.  I found out that OS2 didn't install into that 200MB partition.  It installed into a 7.4MB partition/space that it created where the BeOS partition was.  So no more BeOS partition.  I'm going to retry after testing BeOS boot menu with that 7.4mb partition.

What a mess!

Next steps I thought was going to happen:

3: After install, I booted using the BeOS CD, installed BeOS, and it's boot manager.  I set up the boot entries.  Removed the OS/2 logical partition as an option.  Called the 200MB primary partition with the boot manager "OS/2 Warp".  After installing the boot menu, I was able to boot OS/2 and BeOS from the BeOS boot manager.

4:  I then installed Windows XP into the first primary partition. (C:) Then I used the BeOS boot CD to boot into the BeOS partition (space for boot options).  I used terminal and the command "bootman" to reinstall boot manager the same way, picking Windows, OS/2 boot manager, and BeOS partitions as boot options, and excluding the OS/2 logical partition where OS/2 lives.  I can also add Haiku and Slackware here if I want.

[_AP]

Airboot installs into the MBR. IBM's Boot Manager installs into a minimal sized primary.
For your set up, what I would do is use OS/2 LVM to partition something like,
primary bootmanager 8MB (one cylinder, the smallest that LVM will allow)
primary XP 16GB
extended OS/2 8GB
extended BeOS 40GB
extended 32 GB Haiku
extended 20GB Slackware,

Adding the planned partitions to bootmanager.
Then I would carefully install the other operating systems, usually using the advanced option so you only reformat the partitions and perhaps change the partition type.
I've never installed BeOS, I'm assuming it will install in an extended.
I did install Haiku once out of curiosity, things went smoothly, though I can't remember much about it besides no problems.
Slackware, you will have to be careful to just initialize the partition, put grub or lilo in the EBR, not the MBR, and perhaps use fdisk to change the type. And what about a swap partition? A 2 GB one perhaps?
XP, I've never installed, Win2K said during install it noticed boot manager and suggested that I use its disk manager to make boot manager bootable. Much better then Win95, which at the end of install informed the user that the OS/2 partition was now gone. In reality a minute in fdisk brought it back.

OS/2 has always been particular about partitioning, everything has to align with a cylinder boundary while other OS's will try to use all the space even if it means a partition ends in a weird spot as OS/2 sees it. Sometimes you end up with a functioning OS/2 but LVM won't run. With OS/2 4.5+ and LVM, we also need the LVM info saved in the MBR/EBR, what drive letter we have assigned and some other stuff about JFS. Whether Bootman touches that part, I don't know.

Edit: I'd assign the OS/2 partition as E: that way a shared partition can be D:

I have installed Slackware with Lilo before, and into the EBR or root of drive.  So that's not a problem.  I could install BeOS on an extended partition, but I don't want to take any chances.  Haiku can go into there though, as that's less of a hassle to reinstall.  Also, I don't use swap on any of my operating systems and haven't had a problem yet.  I don't know what kind of wear that will put on the SSD, and IDE SSDs aren't cheap or abundant.

The previous post I made is still a work in progress.

[_AP]

What are the instructions for installing OS/2 on a logical volume, with the boot manager in a primary partition.  The rest of the things I can figure out after.  Even if I wanted to dual boot with Windows XP.  Lets say partition 1 is XP, partition 2 is OS/2 boot manager, logical partition 1 is OS/2.  I assume booting from partition 2 should be able to use that to boot logical partition 1.  I just don't know the steps.

[Dave Yeo]

Start LVM, use arrow key to highlight the volume you want to install on. Press enter. Then if everything is good with your partitioning, do "Set the volume installable", "Set the volume startable", "Add the volume to boot manager menu". Might have to "Change the volume drive letter" first. You may want to press F3 and save the changes at some points.
If you can not select the installable etc, "Delete the volume", "Create a new volume" first. May be asked to reboot during this process, though after pressing F3 and save.
If that doesn't work, it is possible that the partition table is corrupt from the LVM's point of view.
After installing XP, you may have to use the Windows disk manager to set the Boot Manager startable or whatever the term is.

Windows and OS/2 will both install a swap file by default, assuming your computer has 2GB (or even 1GB) of ram, OS/2 will seldom or never actually swap. Don't know about XP, likely more aggressive using swap.

Edit: Not sure about the OS/2 volume being set startable, perhaps jsut the boot manager being startable is good enough. Been a long time since I"ve manually done this, ArcaOS has the Installation Volume Manager which is better then LVM

[_AP]

So I think I did the best I could.

I used virtualbox commands to use the physical drive as a VMDK.  I used BeOS to partition the drive, but OS/2 probably would've worked also.  3 primary partitions, 4 logical.  I discovered it really doesn't matter.  I installed BeOS and OS/2 in primary partitions, as well as the OS/2 boot manager that really wants a primary partition.  I setup partitions for KolibriOS, Slackware, Haiku, and XOSL (just in case).

After competing the setup of OS/2, and installing the BeOS boot manager, it worked.  I could use the BeOS boot manager to boot the OS/2 partitions.  Finished up, but the drive in the laptop, and... no luck.  Doesn't load either OS/2 Boot or Install partition.

Im sure there is an answer, idk what a different computer or drive would change.  I have only been able to get it working on a virtual machine with a virtual drive or physical drive.

I used XOSL.  It takes over the MBR, while also being installed in a logical partition.  It also cannot boot the OS/2 partition or OS/2 boot manager, however, it can boot "Original MBR" which boots the OS/2 boot manager.  It works out that way, so I have the 5 operating systems working on XOSL, but it's not as nice and pretty as BeOS boot manager.  If the MBR gets messed up, just use the OS/2 CD to set boot manager startable with LVM, or reinstall if necessary.  Then use XOSL cd (freedos) to restore XOSL to the partition.

XOSL boots original MBR, BeOS, And Haiku fine.  It also boots KolibriOS and Slackware using their own LILO installations.

[_AP]

Damn.  I don't know what I did, but the partition table got corrupt somehow.  I've tried several times again, and now I have this newer issue of partition table getting corrupt.  I only used LVM for partitioning.  I formatted some partitions with BeOS or Slackware and cfdisk, but I should be able to, otherwise dual boot wouldn't be possible since OS/2 can only format FAT and HPFS.
I did install XOSL which modifies the MBR, but I did that before and it was fine.

[ivan]

Maybe you should be using more than one disk, that way they don't mess each other up.

[_AP]

It's obnoxious because I had it working briefly the way I wanted.  I was just stupid when I wanted to make a shared partition for file transfer between OSs.  It's a laptop.  I do have a spare drive sled somewhere, so I might do it that way at this point.